For Sale or Lease
Gaylord and Hildy Stokes were faced with the inevitable task of house hunting. Their once beautiful old brownstone had been condemned by the city and would soon be torn down to make way for a more modern housing project.
Long since retired from the workforce, the couple did not have to consider the job market when selecting a new place in which to live. Also, there were no children or other family members to tie them to one particular geographic area. They could literally move anywhere in the world.
"Where should we begin?" Hildy asked her husband.
"Why don't we have a look at the real estate ads to get an idea of what properties are out there?" Gaylord suggested. "I've got a stack of newspapers here from just about every major city in America. I think I'll begin with The New York Times."
"What else have you got?"
Gaylord reached down for the next paper in the stack.
"Here's the Los Angeles Times."
"Droughts, fires, mudslides and earthquakes. No, thank you."
"How about the Miami Herald then?" he asked, grabbing another newspaper.
"Hurricanes and bugs, not to mention stucco and tacky pink flamingoes. Yuck!"
"All right, Hildy. Why don't we begin by deciding where you would like to live?"
"I like old places, ones rich with history."
"Good. I think I have The Daily Telegraph right here."
"I don't want to move back to England. I rather like the States."
"Why don't we just stay here in New York then? There must be plenty of good places we could move right into."
"I don't care for New York anymore. It's gotten far too crowded and noisy."
Gaylord sighed.
How have I put up with Hildy all these years? he wondered.
The answer was an obvious one. He loved her very much.
"We can move out West where there are plenty of wide open spaces."
"The houses are too new, and all those modern conveniences annoy me. To hell with central air and solar panels! I want a fireplace and big shuttered windows that can be thrown open at night."
"What about the South, then? There are quite a few old antebellum places still in existence."
"Perhaps," Hildy said without much conviction. "So many of them have been renovated and restored to their pre-war glory. Yet it seems to me that dwelling in one of those places would be a bit like being on display in a museum."
"Have you got any suggestions?" he asked, trying to keep his patience under control.
"There are a lot of nice old homes in New England, particularly in Massachusetts," she said with a smile.
"Massachusetts it is then. I should have The Boston Globe somewhere in this pile," he declared, searching through the stack of newspapers again. "Ah, here it is."
Hildy sat down next to her husband and looked over his shoulder as he turned to the real estate section. Gaylord read through several ads, but Hildy found fault with each prospective house. She quickly rejected the idea of a planned community. What good were pools, tennis courts and golf courses to Hildy, who rarely ventured outdoors? Townhouses, too, were out of the question, as were condominiums.
"Here's a nice place," Gaylord said, pointing to a small, black-and-white photograph of a 1950s split-level. "Look, it has got two fireplaces, hardwood floors and cathedral ceilings."
Hildy took one look at the picture and grimaced.
"It has no warmth, no character. We might as well move into a Holiday Inn."
"What about a ranch or a Cape Cod?"
"Too small."
"Here's a lovely Tudor."
"Tudor? It reminds me of Henry VIII, the Tower of London, beheadings ...."
"Really, now, Hildy! Don't you think you're being a little ridiculous?"
"Why? Because I want a house I can feel comfortable in?"
"You find fault with everything that's here."
"Just keep looking," she said with a bewitching smile. "I'm sure I'll find something I like."
Gaylord turned the page.
"Look at this lovely Victorian-style house. It has a mansard roof and ...."
Hildy's hand suddenly shot in front of her husband's face, pointing to a photograph of a large saltbox at the bottom of the page.
"That's the place!" she cried excitedly.
Gaylord glanced at the picture and then read the description beneath it aloud.
"Two-thousand-plus-square-foot saltbox. Four bedrooms. Two and a half bathrooms. Finished basement. Center chimney with five-foot-high hearth. Rumford fireplace. Cedar Shake roof. Wide board pine floors. Rustic wood beams. Handmade wainscoting. Beehive oven and crane arm let you cook over the open fire."
"Oh, Gaylord, it sounds perfect!"
"Listen to this," he said with rising excitement. "The house was constructed of wood reclaimed from a two-hundred-year-old building in Maine."
"How charming!"
"What do you say we head up to—where is it?—Maple Grove, Massachusetts, and have a look at this place?"
Hildy nodded her head enthusiastically.
* * *
Gaylord and Hildy Stokes stood across the street from the property looking at the exterior of the saltbox.
"What do you think," Gaylord asked, "now that you've seen it in person?"
"It got a lot of—what's the term realtors use?—curb appeal."
"It certainly has."
Hildy smiled, delighted that her husband seemed to like the place nearly as much as she did.
"Those people must be the owners," Gaylord said when he saw a middle-aged couple leave the house, get into a car and drive away.
"They look like nice people to me," Hildy said. "And they have certainly taken care of the place. It appears as though the lawn has been professionally landscaped. I can't wait to see what the inside looks like."
Although the house was built in 1976, the decor was unquestionably 1776, if not earlier. Walking into the saltbox was like taking a trip back in time.
Gaylord noted appreciatively, "This place must have cost a pretty penny to build. There's no cheap plywood used here. Whoever built this house, built it to last."
Hildy squeezed his hand.
"Lucky for us, isn't it?"
As they headed up toward the second floor, they heard the staircase creak.
"I love it already!" Hildy giggled.
They gradually made their way through the upper rooms and to the attic.
"Oh, honey!" Hildy exclaimed, her eyes glowing with happiness. "The windows have got actual working shutters, not those phony decorative ones."
"Look at these thick rafters, would you?"
Gaylord whistled and ran his hand over the woodwork.
"Well?" he asked, raising his eyebrow. "Is this the one?"
"Yes! Oh, yes!"
* * *
Vernon and Frieda Lawford had just sat down to dinner when the telephone rang.
"That was Riva Courtland," Vernon announced when he returned to the table after speaking with the real estate agent. "She's going to bring a prospective buyer to see the house later."
"I suppose she wants us to leave again."
"I'm afraid so."
Riva, the foremost realtor in Maple Grove, believed that prospective buyers were often uncomfortable looking through the rooms of a house while the current owners were present."
Frieda pushed her plate away, suddenly losing her appetite.
"Don't worry, honey," her husband said. "All this will be over soon, and we can move into a smaller place."
Frieda wiped a tear from her eye.
"I don't want to move. This is our home. I love it here!"
"I know, dear. Don't you think I feel the same way? I put a lot of hard work into this house over the years. But we need to face facts. Now that we have both retired, we simply can't afford to live here anymore."
After the couple finished dinner, Vernon offered to do the dishes while Frieda got ready to go out. As she walked up the stairs, she felt a sudden, numbing chill. Had Vernon left a window open? She checked the upstairs bedrooms, but all the windows were firmly shut.
"Aren't you ready yet?" her husband asked when he went upstairs to get his jacket.
"Did you feel a cold draft on the stairs when you came up?"
"No, but the hallway was rather chilly. Maybe we're lucky to be moving, after all, what with the rising heating costs."
Frieda would have responded to his comment, had she not heard a loud bang in the attic.
"What was that?" she asked.
"It sounded like the attic door. I must have left it open when I went up to get my fishing tackle this morning. Come on, we've got to get going. Riva will be here any moment."
As the Lawfords drove away, Vernon and Frieda saw the real estate agent pull up in front of their house in her late-model minivan with the potential buyers sitting in the back seats.
* * *
Riva Courtland took the key ring from her handbag and opened the front door to the saltbox. The young couple behind her barged inside, followed by their four children. The two older kids went directly into the Lawfords' living room, turned on their television set and began arguing loudly about which channel they wanted to watch.
"Be careful you don't break anything," the mother yelled as the younger two began running from room to room.
The real estate agent winced when she thought about what the unruly brood would do to the Lawfords' beautiful home should they buy it. As Riva showed the parents the recently remodeled kitchen and spacious formal dining room, the two older children left the television and began sliding down the wooden banister.
"No fair. It was my turn, Danny!" a little girl shouted.
"Get lost, you little creep," her brother rudely replied.
"Mommy!" the girl screamed. "Danny won't let me have a turn."
The mother, in an attempt to be heard over the television and the sound of her four children, yelled at the top of her lungs.
"Cut it out, you two!"
"Why don't we go have a look at the bedrooms now?" the real estate agent suggested, hoping to get the family out of the house before something got broken.
The couple started up the stairs and noticed a bone-chilling draft on the landing.
"This place must cost a fortune to heat," the husband grumbled.
"I did see a nice big fireplace downstairs," his wife said. "That ought to keep the rooms warm and help keep our heating costs down."
"And who do you think is gonna chop the firewood? You?"
"You don't have to be so ...."
The wife's angry retort was cut off by the simultaneous slamming of every door on the upper floor of the house.
"What the hell?" the husband and wife asked in unison.
Suddenly, the electricity went off, and the house was plunged into darkness. The two parents and the four children screamed with fright. When the lights came on moments later, the family hurried out of the house.
Relieved, Gaylord and Hildy Stokes watched the family drive away.
"Imagine having those god-awful children running around here all the time!" Hildy exclaimed with a shudder.
"I don't think they'll be back any time soon," Gaylord said with a smile of satisfaction. "But I think we ought to make sure we don't get any more like them."
"How do we do that?" his wife asked.
"We'll have to make it possible for the Lawfords to keep the house."
"Oh good! They seem like such nice people, and they love this house as much as we do."
* * *
Vernon hung up the telephone receiver, turned toward his wife and laughed.
"What's so funny, dear?" Frieda asked.
"That was Riva," he replied with amusement. "Do you remember those prospective buyers she brought by here last evening?"
"Of course. Why? Did they make an offer to buy the house?"
"No. Quite the contrary. They didn't even stay here long enough to look at the upstairs rooms. They ran out of here, complaining that the house was haunted."
"Haunted? Where on earth did they get that silly idea?"
"I don't know. Riva said something about the doors slamming and the lights all going out. The next thing she knew the couple and their children were out the front door, racing toward the car."
"Our house haunted! That's preposterous!"
Frieda laughed nervously as she remembered the cold draft on the staircase the evening before and the sound of the attic door slamming.
While his wife was taking a shower later that night, Vernon lay on the bed watching the evening news. Suddenly, he heard Frieda scream.
"What's wrong?" he called, running into the bathroom.
His wife pointed to the mirror above the bathroom sink. A thin layer of condensation covered its surface, and someone or something had written six numbers on it.
"I didn't write that," Frieda explained in a frightened voice.
Then, from the bedroom, they could hear the volume of the television set get louder.
"The winning numbers for tonight's Mega Millions drawing are 17, 5, 32, 38, and 41, and the Mega Ball number is 12."
Frieda and Vernon looked at the writing on the mirror and then back at each other. The numbers written in the condensation were the same as the winning numbers in the lottery.
* * *
Three days later, while Frieda Lawford was in the kitchen making breakfast, the radio in the living room suddenly came on. She jumped at the sound, spilling flour on the countertop. She went to the sink to get a wet sponge to clean up the mess, but when she turned around, she saw that numbers had been written in the spilled flour.
At the same time, WOAR's early morning deejay announced, "Tonight's Mega Millions lottery is now over $165,000,000. Everyone be sure to stop and buy a ticket on your way to work or while you're on your lunch hour."
Although not normally a superstitious person, Frieda opened the kitchen drawer, took out a pen and a piece of paper and wrote the numbers down. When she drove to Wegmans later that morning, she bought a lottery ticket.
"Do you honestly think you're going to win?" Vernon asked that evening at dinner when his wife told him about the numbers written in flour on the kitchen counter.
"Maybe the ghost wants us to keep the house," she replied.
"Ghost? What ghost?"
"Think about it for a minute. First, Riva Courtland and the prospective buyers run from the house because they believe it's haunted. Then, someone or something writes the winning lottery numbers on the fogged bathroom mirror. So, when I see numbers written on the countertop at the same time the radio announces that the lottery is worth $165,000,000, I buy a ticket. I have to figure that there is a ghost or some other supernatural entity in this house and that it wants us to win the money."
"We'll see," Vernon said skeptically.
That night, Frieda—who rarely watched the news because she found it depressing—sat beside her husband in front of the television. Somehow, she managed to remain there through the world and local news coverage, the weather forecast and the sports broadcast.
Finally, the attractive, immaculately groomed and well-dressed news anchor made a somewhat humorous comment to his female co-anchor and then turned toward the television audience and announced, "That's it for tonight's news. Coming up next is Kim Fox with the winning lottery numbers."
Frieda sat on the edge of her seat, clutching the ticket tightly in her hand. Kim Fox turned on the lottery machine and read the numbers, one ball at a time. "Tonight's Mega Millions winning numbers are 13, 48, 30, 12 and 29, and the Mega Ball number is 15."
"Vern!" Frieda screamed, jumping up and down like a high school cheerleader. "We won!"
"Now we can keep the house," Gaylord said, hugging his wife.
"Oh, thank you so much," Frieda whispered, looking toward the ceiling.
In response, the lights flickered off and then on again.
* * *
As luck would have it, Frieda's ticket was the only one that contained all the winning numbers including the all-important Mega Ball. Even after paying taxes on the cash payout option, there was more than enough money for the Lawfords to live out the rest of their natural lives in their beloved saltbox in comfort and harmony along with the four-hundred-year-old ghosts of Gaylord and Hildy Stokes, who were more than happy with their new accommodations.
Salem, do you have any idea how that "For Sale" sign got on our front lawn?
